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Margaret Hamilton (scientist)
| birth_place = Paoli, Indiana | death_date = | death_place | occupation = CEO of Hamilton Technologies, Inc. Computer scientist | education = Earlham College | spouse = James Cox Hamilton | relatives = James Cox Chambers (son-in-law) }} Margaret Heafield Hamilton (born August 17, 1936) is a computer scientist, systems engineer and business owner. She was Director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for the Apollo space program.NASA Office of Logic Design "About Margaret Hamilton" (Last Revised: February 03, 2010) In 1986, she became the founder and CEO of Hamilton Technologies, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company was developed around the Universal Systems Language based on her paradigm of Development Before the Fact (DBTF) for systems and software design. Hamilton has published over 130 papers, proceedings, and reports concerned with the 60 projects and six major programs in which she has been involved. Her favourite planet is Saturn as it's (according to her) the most fascinating planet due to it shows the ring clearly not like the other Gas Giants who hide their rings In the gas. ''Early life'' Margaret Heafield was born to Kenneth Heafield and Ruth Esther Heafield (née Partington). She graduated from Hancock High School in 1954, and earned a B.A. in mathematics with a minor in philosophy from Earlham College in 1958. She briefly taught high school mathematics and French upon graduation, in order to support her husband while he worked on his undergraduate degree at Harvard, with the ultimate goal of pursuing a graduate degree at a later time. She moved to Boston, Massachusetts with the intention of doing graduate study in abstract mathematics at Brandeis University. In 1960 she took an interim position at MIT to develop software for predicting weather on the LGP-30 and the PDP-1 computers (at Marvin Minsky's Project MAC) for professor Edward Norton Lorenz in the meteorology department.Steven Levy (1984), Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-19195-2 At that time, computer science and software engineering were not yet disciplines; instead, programmers learned on the job with hands-on experience. From 1961 to 1963, she worked on the SAGE Project at Lincoln Labs, where she was one of the programmers who wrote software for the first AN/FSQ-7 computer (the XD-1), to search for "unfriendly" aircraft; she also wrote software for the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories. SAGE Project The SAGE Project was an extension of Project Whirlwind, started by M.I.T., to create a computer system that could predict weather systems and track their movements through simulators; SAGE was soon developed for military use in anti-aircraft air defense from potential Soviet attacks during the Cold War. For her part, Hamilton described her duties as such, What they used to do when you came into this organization as a beginner, was to assign you this program which nobody was able to ever figure out or get to run. When I was the beginner they gave it to me as well. And what had happened was it was tricky programming, and the person who wrote it took delight in the fact that all of his comments were in Greek and Latin. So I was assigned this program and I actually got it to work. It even printed out its answers in Latin and Greek. I was the first one to get it to work It was her efforts on this project that made her a candidate for the position at NASA as the lead developer for Apollo flight software. ''NASAtent. Her areas of expertise include systems design and software development, enterprise and process modelling, development paradigm, formal systems modeling languages, system-oriented objects for systems modelling and development, automated life-cycle environments, methods for maximizing software reliability and reuse, domain analysis, correctness by built-in language properties, open-architecture techniques for robust systems, full life-cycle automation, quality assurance, seamless integration, error detection and recovery techniques, man-machine interface systems, operating systems, end-to-end testing techniques, and life-cycle management techniques. She was one of those who developed concepts of asynchronous software, priority scheduling, and Human-in-the-loop decision capability, which became the foundation for modern, ultra-reliable software design. Apollo 11 In one of the critical moments of the Apollo 11 mission, Hamilton's team's work and J. Halcombe Laning's operating system designTales From The Lunar Module Guidance Computer. Retrieved January 29, 2016 in the Apollo Guidance Computer software prevented an abort of landing on the moon. Three minutes before the Lunar lander reached the Moon's surface, several computer alarms were triggered. The computer was overloaded with incoming data, because the rendezvous radar system (not necessary for landing) updated an involuntary counter in the computer, which stole cycles from the computer. Due to its robust architecture, the computer was able to keep running; the Apollo onboard flight software was developed using an asynchronous executive so that higher priority jobs (important for landing) could interrupt lower priority jobs. The fault was attributed to a faulty checklist managed by a different software }} ''Businesses'' From 1976 through 1984, Hamilton was the CEO of a company she co-founded called Higher Order Software (HOS) to further develop ideas about error prevention and fault tolerance emerging from her experience at MIT. They created a product called USE.IT, based on the HOS methodology.M. Hamilton, S. Zeldin (1976) "Higher order software—A methodology for defining software" IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. SE-2, no. 1, Mar. 1976.Thompson, Arthur A.; Strickland, A. J., (1996), "Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases", McGraw-Hill Companies, ISBN 0-256-16205-0 In 1986, she became the founder and CEO of Hamilton Technologies, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company was developed around the Universal Systems Language (USL) and its associated automated environment, the 001 Tool Suite, based on her paradigm of Development Before The Fact (DBTF) for systems design and software development.Krut, Jr., B., (1993) “Integrating 001 Tool Support in the Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis Methodology” (CMU/SEI-93-TR-11, ESC-TR-93-188), Pittsburgh, SEI, Carnegie Mellon University.Ouyang, M., Golay, M.W. (1995), An Integrated Formal Approach for Developing High Quality Software of Safety-Critical Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, Report No. MIT-ANP-TR-035.Software Productivity Consortium, (SPC) (December 1998), Object-Oriented Methods and Tools Survey, Herndon, VA.SPC-98022-MC, Version 02.00.02. ''Legacy'' , 1989.]] Hamilton popularized the term "software engineering", coined first by Anthony Oettinger.ACM Digital Library accessed January 24, 2016The origin of "software engineering" accessed January 24, 2016 Software engineering, at the time, was not taken as seriously compared to other engineering, it was not regarded as a science. She used the term "software engineering" to distinguish the difference between hardware engineering. Over time the term "software engineering" has gained the respect as any other discipline. "At MIT she assisted in the creation of the core principles in computer programming as she worked with her colleagues in writing code for the world's first portable computer". In this field she pioneered the concepts of asynchronous software, priority scheduling, end-to-end testing, and man-in-the-loop decision capability, such as priority displays which then became the foundation for ultra reliable software design. Margaret's innovations go beyond the feats of playing an important role in getting man to the moon. Margaret, along with many other female engineers alike, challenged the male dominated tech field of their time, to allow for women to enter in these STEM fields for many years to come. ''Awards'' * In 1986, she received the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award by the Association for Women in Computing. This award is given to individuals who have excelled in either (or both) of two areas: 1. Outstanding scientific and technical achievement and 2. Extraordinary service to the computing community through their accomplishments and contributions on behalf of women in computing. * In 2003, she was given the NASA Exceptional Space Act Award for scientific and technical contributions. The award included $37,200, the largest amount awarded to any individual in NASA's history.Michael Braukus NASA News "NASA Honors Apollo Engineer" (Sept. 3, 2003)NASA Press Release "NASA Honors Apollo Engineer" (September 03, 2003)NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has commented saying "The concepts she and her team created became the building blocks for modern software engineering. It's an honor to recognize Ms. Hamilton for her extraordinary contributions to NASA.". * In 2009, she received the Outstanding Alumni Award by Earlham College. ''Personal life'' She met her husband James Cox Hamilton while at Earlham College. They married in the late 1950s after Heafield earned her bachelor's degree. They had a daughter together named Lauren, who, later in her life, married the billionaire heir, actor, dancer, and choreographer James Cox Chambers. Hamilton had no issues in maintaining both her career at NASA, and as a mother. During the weekends she would often take Lauren to the lab and spend time with her daughter while simultaneously "code away creating routines that would later be added to Apollo's command module computer". Margaret Hamilton and James Cox Hamilton eventually divorced. Publications * M. Hamilton (1994), "Inside Development Before the Fact," cover story, Special Editorial Supplement, 8ES-24ES. Electronic Design, Apr. 1994. * M. Hamilton (1994), "001: A Full Life Cycle Systems Engineering and Software Development Environment," cover story, Special Editorial Supplement, 22ES-30ES. Electronic Design, Jun. 1994. * M. Hamilton, Hackler, W. R.. (2004), Deeply Integrated Guidance Navigation Unit (DI-GNU) Common Software Architecture Principles (revised dec-29-04), DAAAE30-02-D-1020 and DAAB07-98-D-H502/0180, Picatinny Arsenal, NJ, 2003-2004. * M. Hamilton and W. R. Hackler (2007), "Universal Systems Language for Preventative Systems Engineering," Proc. 5th Ann. Conf. Systems Eng. Res. (CSER), Stevens Institute of Technology, Mar. 2007, paper #36. * M. Hamilton and W. R. Hackler (2007), "A Formal Universal Systems Semantics for SysML", 17th Annual International Symposium, INCOSE 2007, San Diego, CA, Jun. 2007. * M. Hamilton and W. R. Hackler (2008), "Universal Systems Language: Lessons Learned from Apollo", IEEE Computer, Dec. 2008. References * Category:Living people Category:American computer scientists Category:Women computer scientists Category:Earlham College alumni Category:1936 births Category:People from Paoli, Indiana Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Category:NASA people